Most likely, failures occurred because Microsoft doesn't really own anything in the 360

Jun 21, 2007 09:33 GMT  ·  By

Everyone has some clue as to how faulty the Xbox 360 is. Generally, I mean. However, an EB Games manager has recently confirmed a percentage of faulty 360 arriving around its launch period. Some 30 percent of them "were coming back faulty." Pretty much explains all the rumors about the machine's failure rate.

Apparently, as Current.com.au informs, the EB Games store manager (who wished to remain anonymous, as you may have imagined already) was contacted by the site in an effort to shed some light on 360's failure rates once and for all. The man stated: "We are definitely getting faulty hardware returns of the Xbox 360, but no-where near as much as we used to when it first came out." That's because Microsoft (after long time struggles with console owners, TV shows and gaming sites) have started to take the matter into their hands.

He continued revealing that "on initial launch, close to 30 per cent of our [Xbox 360s] were coming back faulty, since then though we've only had a handful of consoles come back. Which confirms that the company is on top of the issue. As a comparison, we've only had one Nintendo Wii returned due to faulty hardware and the PS3 has been quite reliable as well with only about five returns so far."

The possible explanation for all the faulty machines is coming from the same store manager who believes multiple companies are involved with it, companies which provided faulty or incompatible parts. As he puts it, Microsoft practically doesn't own anything in the 360: "With the Xbox 360 there are so many companies that have their finger in the pie and it could be contributing to the high failure rate. It's the only machine where the company that's branded on it, Microsoft, doesn't actually own everything in the device."

He gives some pertinent examples too (he knows his hardware): "For example, in the Xbox 360, the CPU is made by AMD and the video card is made by ATI, whereas with the PS3 everything is Sony, they've bought the IBM chips and put it all together in the one go, same with Nintendo, it's all in-house."

So there you have it. Although it's still Microsoft who has the last word when it comes to your malfunctioning Xbox 360, I hope this article helped you answer some questions. The only thing you can do is hope your machine doesn't come from a faulty batch.